ProgDVB is a software which allows you to watch (DVB-S) satellite television and listen to radio channels directly from satellite by using DVB-PCI cards with hardware decoders on the board, satellite dish, and personal x86-compatible computers with Windows 98, 2000 and XP systems. This software has options for working with network broadcasting and Audio/Video recording of the stream to different digital-media formats.

ProgDVB was fairly average and buggy when I was looking around for decent PVR software and tried it (most supplied PVRs are complete garbage).
<br/>
<br/>As an alternative, DVBViewer is by far the best PVR software out of all the many I tried.

I use 4.77 with a Freecom USB DVB-T receiver and the downloadable BDA drivers from the freecom website.

This software is far better than that provided with the DVB stick or PowerCinema. Can't comment on Arcsoft Totalmedia,but this should also work with BDA drivers.

And PROGDVB has a major advantage in that it is free and also has a user forum.

My biggest gripe with Prog is that subtitles are activated automatically. No big deal? well... thing is if the subtitle module is ticked I get an extremely annoying "doop" noise every two seconds.(the noise you get on XP if a program fails to open)so i think subtitles should be not be ticked as default.

Positives are, once i got rid of the bleep,it picked up around fifty seven radio, digital TV and top up channels.

It can record to a schedule, but mute your speakers if its after midnight, or you will be encouraged by your spouse to do so in the middle of the night.

The electronic program guide works well, you can have full screen, window or detail view modes.

You can also rename the channels and then re-sort to your convenience.

This is an excellent piece of software and free, so support the author where you can.

It may be advisable to wait till a release is "stable" before you use. I've had a few instantaneous reboots when using the latest releases, but it is a live work in progress.

I use this software with a Skystar 2 pci card. The software works really well with this card. Video/record quality is great, depending on the channel bit rate of course. The good thing about this software is that doesn’t need much in the way of configuration, I have tried other software which needs video and audio codec's to even get a picture.